In this video we're going to look at 4 ways to burn and dodge in Photoshop.
Now arguably, it's one of the most valuable tools in Photoshop, as a matter
of fact, I'm going to change that... it is THE MOST important tool in Photoshop, in
my opinion. Burning and dodging refers to darkening or lightening areas of your
image selectively. Now this technique can be used to enhance your images by
creating more three dimensionality and helping guide your viewers eye around
the photograph. Now the technique itself derives from the days of film and
darkroom printing, it's useful for any genre of photography and as with many
photoshop tools there are multiple methods to burn and dodge. Now I'm going
to briefly look at the different ways to burn and dodge in Photoshop and when to
use which method but this is something we cover in far more depth on how to do
this in our video tutorials on Karl Taylor Education. So, let's take a look at
what burn and dodge actually means. So here on screen, you can see two images,
one of the images is before any Photoshop work and the other image is
after burn and dodge and the important thing to point out with this image is
that there is no Photoshop or comping or cloning or any other work taking place
here, this is the RAW camera file and then this is the burn and dodged result.
But you can see how much additional impact burning and dodging makes to the
final image. So whilst we're not really changing anything significantly within
the image, we're only changing tonal values, lightening and darkening
selective areas of the image to help guide the eye but the impact from doing
this is profound. Now in this shot of Ophelia,
you can see how rather than using techniques to retouch skin and blemishes,
the makeup was actually pretty much flawless. Most of the techniques applied
to the retouch here are actually burning and dodging but again you can see the
significant impact that those burning and dodging techniques make to the image.
Now in this example in this fashion image you can see how important burning
and dodging actually becomes to the clothes themselves, because quite often
with fashion photography, clothes will have creases, dents and imprints in them
that create shadows and highlights and we use the technique of burning and
dodging to rebalance the shot remove those highlights or remove those shadows
to even things out and in this example you can see how effective that is. So
what was burning and dodging in the darkroom? Well the term burning and
dodging refers to that darkroom technique used in the printing process
for controlling the exposure of a selected area of the image. Nowadays
we use a very similar technique in Photoshop but we have far greater
precision with it in Photoshop than we did in the darkroom. Burning refers to
the process used to darken certain areas of the image when printing from
negatives, this was done by allowing more light to reach a particular area and
this could be done by holding a sheet of cardboard with a hole in it over the
area of the print and it would be positioned to let light through that
hole to darken that particular area. Dodging does the opposite of burning, it
lightens certain areas of an image and we do this in the darkroom by holding a
piece of card or paper usually attached to a thin handle and then light would be
blocked from hitting a certain area of the print and therefore brighten that
part of the picture. Now in darkroom printing that was printing from a
negative image if we were printing from a positive you'd use the burning and
dodging techniques the opposite way round. Now when do we use burn and dodge?
Well, when we take a photo we essentially create a 2D image,
but in order for that image to be aesthetically pleasing it's important
that we make it look as three-dimensional as possible. Now we can
do this by adjusting brightness and contrast in an image, however, using the
brightness and contrast adjustments in Photoshop alone can result in a very
artificial looking image, this is why burning and dodging is so useful. These
techniques allow us to make subtle yet effective changes that can change the
shape and form of an image they almost change the lighting within
the image. Let's take a look at how effective that can be
with this graphic. The images shown here are exactly the same the only difference
is that the image on the right has had burning and dodging applied to it
creating a three-dimensional feel to what is in fact originally a
2-dimensional image now there are still both two-dimensional images but one of
them has a very much more 3-dimensional appearance to it. Now you can see exactly
how I achieved this in my burning and dodging Photoshop class but these
techniques can be used on any image and as you can see are particularly useful
when wanting to increase three dimensionality. Now using the technique
of lightening and darkening selected parts of an image, it's also possible to
guide the viewers eye through the image in the direction you want to. Often
retouching in Photoshop we're retouching to remove blemishes such as pimples but
this doesn't always require the clone or the healing brush tools, in actual fact
many imperfections such as this can instead be fixed or repaired with
burning and dodging. Now depending on your skill level there are different
ways to burn and dodge in Photoshop each of these have their own advantages and
disadvantages and you'll have to experiment with each one to find out
which works best for you. Here's another great example where I've shot these
Beats Headphones and here you can see the RAW image but then you can see how I
smooth the tones out in certain areas of the product to create a more pleasing image.
So here are four ways you can burn and dodge in Photoshop. The simple method is
the burning and dodging tools that are available in the tools menu on the left
hand side of Photoshop. To use these tools simply select the tool and then
set the brush value to the range that you want to use whether it's on the
mid-tones the shadows or the highlights and select the percentage intensity of
the tool itself. Once you've set these, you simply brush
over the area you want to lighten or darken, now this is a useful technique
for those new to Photoshop because it's simple and it's easy to understand,
however, I don't tend to use the burn and dodge tools themselves because there are
more accurate and effective ways of burning and dodging. One of the
disadvantages of actually using the Photoshop burn and dodge tools method is
that it's a destructive method of editing. To edit images non-destructively
make sure you work on a new or duplicate layer this will allow you to go back and
alter the changes to an extent as well. Now option 2 is using burn and
dodging with curves adjustment layers. Now this is my preferred method of
burning and dodging as it allows for much greater precision than the burn and
dodge tools and it's also non-destructive because you're working
on adjustment layers rather than the actual image, however, it does require a
knowledge of using layers and masks. This image requires creating two new curve
adjustment layers, one lighter and one darker, and then applying a mask to each
of those adjustment layers. After inverting the masks, the brush tool can
be used to reveal the lightened curved or the darkened curve adjustment through
the layer into the image. This method is clearly demonstrated in
the Burning & Dodging Photoshop class on KarlTaylorEducation.com. One of the
advantages of this method is that you can make an action to create the burn
and dodge layers, or you can save yourself even
more time and download the actions from our website. It's also a highly precise
method of retouching as not only can you select the brush settings you can also
change the opacity settings of the layer, of the adjustment layer after, or even
adjust the intensity of the curve once you've created it. The 3rd method of
burning and dodging is using selections, now this method allows you to make
adjustments to very precise areas of an image using a selection tool, you simply
select the area of the image that you want to edit and you create a new
adjustment layer, a new curves adjustment layer, and this you can then
change the amount of the curve according to the effect you want to achieve so for
example either brighter or darker by pulling on the curve. Now as with the
previous method you can also control the opacity of the layer afterwards and it's
a non-destructive method. The 4th method is soft light blend mode. This
method involves creating a new layer and selecting either soft light or overlay
as the blend mode. Now to do this, go to layer, new layer, and in the new layer
dialog box select either soft light or overlay blend mode. Once the new layer is
created using the brush tool in either white or black you can paint over the
area that you want to burn or dodge. Again I don't tend to use this method as
I find it much slower than dodging and burning using curves adjustment layers.
Now although Photoshop is the most popular choice of software for
adjustments like burning and dodging you can also achieve similar results using
Lightroom's adjustment brush by painting over areas of the image that you want to
change you can then adjust the exposure, contrast, highlight, shadows,
white and black levels. Effectively burning and dodging depending on which
one you change. Now regardless of whether you're working in Lightroom or Photoshop
using selections or curves, burn and dodge are the most important techniques
for any type of photography retouching and I hope this video has helped you
understand a little bit more about this full technique and remember you can see
exactly how to do this in great detail in our in-depth Photoshop classes on
KarlTaylorEducation.com
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